Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(3)

He figured he wasn’t suffering from phantom-limb syndrome, but phantom-friend syndrome.

“Then as a brother, tell me what happened…what really happened,” she implored.

She’d always been too damned smart for her own good.

“He died in an accident. He was cleanin’ an old gas tank on one of the bikes; there was a spark; some fuel on his rag ignited; he fell into a tray of oil and burned to death before anyone could get to him.” The lie came out succinctly because he’d practiced it so friggin’ often, but the last word still stuck in his throat like a burr.

Unfortunately, it was the only explanation he could give her about the last minutes of her brother’s life. Because the truth fell directly under the heading National Security Secret. He thought it very likely Ali suspected Grigg hadn’t spent the last three-plus years partnering with a few ex-military, spec-ops guys, living and working in Chicago as a custom motorcycle builder, but it wasn’t his place to give her the truth. The truth that Grigg Morgan had still been working for Uncle.

When he and Grigg bid their final farewells to the Marine Corps, it was only in order to join a highly secretive “consulting” group. The kind of group that took on only the most clandestine of operations. The kind of group whose missions never made the news or crossed the desk of some pencil-pushing aide at the DOD in a tidy little dossier. They put the black in black ops, their true identities known only to a select few, and those select few were very high up in government. High. Like, all the way at the friggin’ top.

So no. He couldn’t tell her what really happened to Grigg. And he hoped to God she never found out.

She searched his determinedly blank expression, and he watched helplessly as the impotent rage rose inside her—an emotional volcano threatening to explode. Before he could stop her, she slammed out of the vehicle, hurdled the fence, and raced toward the dunes, long hair flying behind her, slim bare legs churning up great puffs of sand that caught in the briny wind and swirled away.

Shit.

He wrenched open his door and bounded after her, his left leg screaming in agony, not to mention the goddamned broken ribs that threatened to punch a hole right through his lung. Blam! Wheeze. That quick and he’d be spending another day or two in the hospital. Fan-friggin’-tastic. Just what he didn’t need right now.

“Ali!” he bellowed, grinding his teeth against the pain, running with an uneven, awkward limp made even more so by the shifting sand beneath his boots.

She turned on him then in grief and frustration, slamming a tiny balled-up fist into the center of his chest. Sweet Christ…

Agony exploded like a frag grenade. He took a knee. It was either that or just keel over dead.

“Nate?” Her anger turned to shock as she knelt beside him in the sand. “What—” Before he knew what she was about, she lifted the hem of his T-shirt, gaping at the ragged appearance of his torso. His ribs were taped, but the rest of him looked like it’d gone ten rounds with a meat grinder and lost.

“Holy shit, Nate!” He almost smiled despite the blistering pain that held him in its teeth, savage and unyielding as a junkyard dog. Ali never cursed. Either it was written somewhere in her DNA or in that contract she’d signed after becoming a kindergarten teacher. “What happened to you?”

He shook his head because, honestly, it was all he could manage. If he so much as opened his mouth, he was afraid he’d scream like a girl.

“Nate!” She threw her arms around his neck. God, that felt right…and so, so wrong. “Tell me! Tell me what happened to you. Tell me what really happened to Grigg.” The last was breathed in his ear. A request. A heartrending plea.

“Y’know I can’t, Ali.” He could feel the salty hotness of her tears where she’d tucked her face into his neck. Smell, in the sweet humidity of her breath, the lemon tea she’d been drinking before he knocked on her parents’ door and told her the news that instantly blew her safe, sheltered world apart.

This was his greatest fantasy and worst nightmare all rolled into one. Ali, sweet, lovely Ali. She was here. Now. Pressed against his heart.

He reluctantly raised arms gone heavy with fatigue and sorrow. If Grigg could see him now, he’d take his favorite 1911-A1 and drill a .45 straight in his sorry ass. But the whole point of this Charlie Foxtrot was that Grigg wasn’t here. No one was here to offer Ali comfort but him. So he gathered her close—geez, her hair smelled good—and soothed her when the grief shuddered through her in violent, endless waves like the tide crashing to shore behind them.

And then she kissed him…





Chapter One


Three months later…

She had that feeling again.

That creepy, crawly sensation prickling along the back of her neck. The one that made her shoulder blades instinctively hitch together in defense.

She was being watched.

Ali Morgan hastened her steps. Her black, patent leather, ballet flats slapped against the hot pavement as she darted a quick glance across the street.

Nothing.

Not that that was unusual. She rarely saw him, the man she’d begun to think of as her elusive shadow. But somehow she sensed he was there…somewhere…

Snapping a fast look over her shoulder, she rapidly scanned the faces of the pedestrians behind her. Nope. He wasn’t back there, either. Not that she’d ever seen him full-on, but she’d caught enough glimpses of him to know her elusive shadow wasn’t the middle-aged man caring the brown-bagged loaf of French bread, nor was he the black-and-yellow-rugby-jersey-wearing guy who—